They could have had something good, if they hadn't taken ideas from every other shooter out there to make their game more brown and gritty while simultaneously having no sense of quality humour. If you're going to make a ridiculous game, make the gameplay equally ridiculous. No one wants Duke Cover-Shooterem.

"Recommendation: If you are stuck on a deserted island with only this game to play, go fishing instead. Worth playing so that you may be able to say that you did, but otherwise imminently forgettable and not worth your time."

I'm not one to beef about scores too much, but what would a game have to do get a 1-star rating, I mean Jesus Christ xD

Abandon4093:I still think they missed a trick with the ego health system.

He could have had to do something cool to get his ego back. Like shooting a dude in the dick or something.

The more zaney stuff you do, the bigger your ego bar gets. And when it's low. You have to do something like benchpress an enemy carcase to boost it back up.

The rest of it looks pretty much how I imagined though.

Theres an idea. You could still have had "healthpacks" as well, like autograph books or dvds of Duke around to collect. Salvagable system. Grunting and flying backwards when hit by a shrunken enemy like its a freightrain is just broken.

Abandon4093:I still think they missed a trick with the ego health system.

He could have had to do something cool to get his ego back. Like shooting a dude in the dick or something.

The more zaney stuff you do, the bigger your ego bar gets. And when it's low. You have to do something like benchpress an enemy carcase to boost it back up.

This was exactly what I was thinking! It could have encouraged you to fight on more awesome as you got wounded instead of hide. Shame they didn't do something like that because it sounds like it would be fun and in character.

I bought it on day 1 (well technically a day before the release date) but I did not expect anything mind blowing or great even. I expected some silly and fun to play (at least fun for me). Like some other people before me said the game isn't utterly bad, neither is it a good game. I love blowing up stuff with heavy weapons.

The nice parts, indeed the monster truck level are great and feels very fun to play(the truck reacts nicely(at least it doesn't react/turn like a ton of bricks like in Alone in the dark)). The part before you reach the truck was very fun as well blasting aliens with the choppergun. Lot of interactivity in the game world

Less good bits, close to pixel perfect jumping (failing will result in death). That got really annoying in the Duke Burger Kitchen bit. I hated jumping on small objects when they did it with the very first Turok game ages ago. It still is annoying to jump onto something small in 1st person view.

It is indeed a shame that you can only have 2 weapons at one time(and do not blame consoles for that if perfect dark and goldeneye on the n64 can handle multiple weapons a game on this current generation should really be able to do it(plus it was possible with duke nukem 3d xla version)). Only being able to carry 1 item means you have to really plan using them, dunno if that is a good or bad choice. The fact that when you execute a monster will refill your ego meter does make sense(makes more sense then hiding and getting it refilled that way.

Abandon4093:I still think they missed a trick with the ego health system.

He could have had to do something cool to get his ego back. Like shooting a dude in the dick or something.

The more zaney stuff you do, the bigger your ego bar gets. And when it's low. You have to do something like benchpress an enemy carcase to boost it back up.

The rest of it looks pretty much how I imagined though.

Theres an idea. You could still have had "healthpacks" as well, like autograph books or dvds of Duke around to collect. Salvagable system. Grunting and flying backwards when hit by a shrunken enemy like its a freightrain is just broken.

Or have a "taunt" button to spout one-liners about the local enemies... Or have hostages to rescue who cheer Duke on once they're rescued, increasing his regeneration rate... Yeah, sounds like they missed a ton of opportunities to riff on the whole "ego" idea.

It sounds like with another month of work they could make the game into something a lot more playable, if they were willing to release a patch that made the health system and weapons inventory back into something old-school. Whether they would actually do such a thing is another question.

It's kind of a shame. As I've said before, I don't have any pity left in my heart for 3DRealms, but it's a shame to drag Gearbox down. There was no real reason this couldn't have been a good game.

I guess I'll wait for the Steam sale to check this one out for myself.

The review does beg the question what would require a 1-star review, short of a disk that managed to damage the system that tried to play it to inoperability.

Dexter111:Aren't we a gwown-up, aren't we?So he drank beer, went to strip-clubs and was slapping wall-tits when he was 12 is what I got out of this and now he's so manly and has outgrown all those things :P

This would actually make me want to buy the game even more if I didn't know that it was a console-port with 2 weapons at any given time lacking "fun gameplay".

He called that part of the review things he'd love about dnf if he was 12, not stuff he did then and grew out of.

I'm not going to lie, Russ, part of me really wanted this game to be decent. If only so it could metaphorically spit in the faces of everyone that had ever made jokes about it during it's development time. It would've been the greatest comeback in gaming history.

... but no, I think we all knew that wasn't going to happen. Not after that whackjob who was running 3D Realms kept holding back the release to gradually make the game an unholy chimera offspring of every "modern" shooter mechanic in the industry these days. It's a shame, really.

I'm going to my local Gamestop tonight for their Duke Nukum midnight launch event, not to pick up this game, but to pick up my pre-order of Alice: Madness Returns. I don't think I'm even going to be able to make eye contact with some of these people as I walk out of the store with the game I've been waiting to be made for a decade knowing that, odds are, only one of us is truly going to be happy with our purchase.

"I'm not 12 so this game sucks"Do we really need to act our age all the time? Being adults we are expected to act our age all the time, at work, in public, ect... Acting anything other then as an adult is frowned upon so really... a game that does not take its self seriously and allows you to toss shit at the wall, get drunk and burp and slap wall tits just because you can really lets you just have a small amount of fun time that you can not normally do because... its just not mature to do.

For myself, I am going to play this and I am going to enjoy it because sometimes I just get tired of having to be mature all the time.

Beat you to it :P Hypnotic reviews: Duke Nukem ForeverYou can read my thoughts on the game there, but in short, I liked it. That boss you mentioned was annoying, but I saw it as more of a challenge, and while I agree with you on basically every point, I saw a lot of positive stuff as well that you apparently didn't. You may want to check it out if you want a more positive view.

The game also has multiplayer if you care. I didn't. While the multiplayer was not yet available as of the time of this writing, there's simply no conceivable way it would have influenced this review in any way other than to lower our already pitifully low score. Your mileage, of course, may vary.

Let's be honest here - Queen, at least on second difficulty, is not really hard. There is an obvious safe spot on the left near the ammo crate where she can't hit you at all. Supporting monsters come in 2 ways: a pregnator egg thrown towards you - shoot it with a rocket - or an octobrain. There is always only 1 egg or 1 octobrain, and there is significant time before new spawns so you just sit in the safe spot, kill those 2 monsters, then shoot Queen. In fact, once you realize what you are supposed to do this battle is piss easy, requires 0 effort and therefore becomes almost dull. On my first run I've killed Queen in about 7 minutes on my first try. On my second run I knew exactly what to do and how and it took me about 4 minutes. I play on PS3, if it matters.Well, there are unfair moments - for example, to reliably beat Battlelord on the Dam you must bring a beer and a holoduke with you for his second phase, then it will take 2 minutes, otherwise it'll be a horrible chore.I've completed the game and I'd give it 7/10. Really appreciate the gore.There is 1 alarming fact in the whole review. Only one, but it's important. Reviewer actually spent an hour trying to beat alien Queen. Really? You never even tried to think it seems. It's a disgrace. I can see someone spending maybe 15 minutes - figuring the right spot and minion spawn pattern - but an hour? Sorry, but reviewer sucks at this game. And that is a fact said reviewer basically admitted. It's all right to criticize the flaws, and God knows DNF has them aplenty, BUT if player sucks that bad himself... The criticism becomes largely irrelevant.DNF - 7/10Escapist review of DNF - 3/10

I'm not one to beef about scores too much, but what would a game have to do get a 1-star rating, I mean Jesus Christ xD

Seconded. If a game causes physical nausea and still warrants two stars, I'd hate to think what would be required to make that second star go away. Maybe a boot reaching out of the screen to give the player a swift kick in the groin...

Oh and speaking of immature humour, Mr. Pitts, were you expecting something else here? The trailers and early gameplay demos didn't really leave much to the imagination as to where this game was going to be drawing its jokes from. I'll give you the frustration at the game mechanics, the poorly thought out health recovery scheme (if they wanted to make it a bit more reasonable, they could've had Duke carry around a pocket mirror for looking into when his ego ran low. Maybe even tacked on a few lines of silly to get old after being repeated umpteen times, "Dammit. Almost broke my shades there."), and the slapdash level design, but really, nobody picking up this game should be expecting anything but open, honest, antagonistic, male machismo.

Woodsey:"Recommendation: If you are stuck on a deserted island with only this game to play, go fishing instead. Worth playing so that you may be able to say that you did, but otherwise imminently forgettable and not worth your time."

I'm not one to beef about scores too much, but what would a game have to do get a 1-star rating, I mean Jesus Christ xD

no kidding. i cant imagine a worse review of a game. this is why the scoring system sucks. it introduces confusion into the system due to discrepancies between the rating and the review.

as for the duke, its a shame the game is so bad since i quite appreciate the humor and the self referential-ness of it.